


The One and Only

by WinterDreams



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Blood Gulch Chronicles, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, exploring some of the holes retconning created
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-19 06:43:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8194144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinterDreams/pseuds/WinterDreams
Summary: So Tex lets him call them ghosts, and lets him poke at her as if they were really dating, and she kisses him with a ferocity greater than either of their memories.





	

**Author's Note:**

> An exploration of Tex during Blood Gulch, what she remembers and what she doesn't based on the mess retconning left us, and the goodbye she and Church deserved. Birthday drabble for my friend! <3

On good days, Tex spits in the face of anyone who claims she—any woman—is an unsolvable puzzle, a mystery forever impossible to comprehend.  

On bad days, she wonders.

She wonders about the Project, the memories, and the touching.

Her memories are fragmented, unreliable things broken by the Project and O’Malley and the Director. Except she no longer remembers the how or the why quite so clearly, just remembers needing to get out, remembers her friends who weren’t her friends really and whom she didn’t save from being broken.

She didn’t even save herself judging by the way she simultaneously accepts certain factual memories while recoiling as explosively as the kickback of a gun at them.

(Like the time Church called her Allison. She responded to the name even as a part of her screamed and screamed. She is Tex, not _her_ , she wanted to tell him, except she doesn’t even know who _her_ is. She hates that name and all its connotations, she wanted to tell him, except she can’t remember the exact connotations in words, only in the red of a little girl’s hair and the red paint on armour and the red fire consuming a twisted hunk of metal in the unforgiving snow.

She shot back “Leonard” instead, but there was no way to see his reaction through the metal of their helmets. Later in the base with synthetic faces bared, she called the name again to see if he hates it as much as her. He only frowned slightly, while she felt like she was going to choke on her own bile).

Church remembers even less, though less of _what_ she doesn’t know, or even what _more_ would be. He tells her he was there to see her off before the injection of the AIs and she accepts this twisted version of events even as her memories clash. The wreckage of after-images that echo in her mind are no easier to understand though, so she stays quiet and tries to keep a mind on the present.

Except there is no one separating the past and present when O’Malley is running around causing chaos and Church still loves her in a way that’s both distant and desperate. The Blues and Reds are almost a relief in the midst of all of that, even though a part of her whispers they are here because of _her_ and all that they suffer is her fault.

( _Her_ or Agent Texas? Or is there really a difference at that point?)

But they don’t act like they are suffering in the way others would. Oh sure, they bitch and they moan and they snipe at each other nearly every second of the day, but they are nowhere close to breaking with no chance of recovering like the agents of Project Freelancer did.

(How and why and when did they break? She remembers a broken ship and broken lights and bloody hands but those are not answers).

They are scared of her and yet they are not. They bitch about her but in the same way they do about everyone else, and they give her a room in Blue base when she is there.

They give her a synthetic body when she “dies”, just like they give Church one.

Occupying a fake body should give her pause but it feels familiar, like she’s never possessed a real body in the first place.

(Someone broke that body too. The first one and the one in between, and she thinks when they broke the one in between, they broke her mind too).

With the synthetic body comes touching, and she has to wonder about that too.

Out in the canyon the Reds and Blues don’t touch each other beyond what is necessary. In the bases it’s different, but Tex carefully avoids Caboose’s hugs and Tucker’s piggybacks and all other manners of shenanigans. The few times they do touch her, something inside her whispers that she isn’t one of them, and for the rest of the day the too tight skin she occupies doesn’t feel real.

Touching Church makes things better and worse.

She will not be the one to try and make him remember everything when some part of her expected to see him lying exhausted and hollow-eyed on the floor when she first arrived in the canyon. She will not comment on the way something inside her always whispers _not yours, he’s not yours_ whenever he speaks to her.

The longer she sticks around though, the more that voice fades, because what he says is always different from what the past dictates he should.

And touch is even better. For he might not be fully hers, but he is the same as Tex. She still doesn’t know what that means, even after the last time they make-out while occupying those synthetic bodies. She did, she knows. There’s a secret she discovered, about him, about her, about the AIs, and about all her friends.

(Once, after they have sex, she thinks she remembers going to a snowy land twice for a rescue. Church’s hand is tangled in hers as he simply lies quietly beside her, and she thinks it was this hand she failed to grab and keep. And maybe that second time, the people she was fighting decided to take away that resolve by taking away the knowledge it was founded on).

So she no longer remembers everything about the secret, but she knows there is something different, just like she knows calling him “Leonard” and herself “Allison” is not right. They are not those names and she is not considered fully her own person, but neither is he.

Ghosts, he calls them, different from Tucker, Caboose, the Reds, and all the old Agents, and not just because they now have synthetic bodies. Ghosts, he calls them, and says “boo, motherfucker” at Tucker in the morning. Ghosts he calls them, and it’s juvenile and not quite true, but it soothes the wounds she didn’t even realize her disjointed memories were causing.

So Tex lets him call them ghosts, and lets him poke at her as if they were really dating, and she kisses him with a ferocity greater than either of their memories.

Except then Tucker has an alien baby (which is not _cute_ but it’s not as disgusting as Church first claims him to be) and York is dead and Wyoming comes back and O’Malley reveals a way to win the war with aliens.

Every part of Tex lights up at that and Church once again judges her wrong, claiming she would never agree to it. He sounds betrayed when she says she agrees with O’Malley, and he argues with her, and she can’t even be mad that the only thing he has ever cared about is keeping her safe.

(This _should_ make her mad, that he’s doing this again, letting his attachment to her overshadow everything again, but she doesn’t know where the _again_ comes from, and besides, this Church has never claimed to give a single damn about the war).

Chaos ensues and she refuses to feel bad about Church calling for her and Tucker yelling at her not to touch his son and all the others once more caught in the crossfire.

Tex doesn’t even know if the desperate desire to end the war comes from the fake memories or from the bits of genuine identity she has, but surely this—saving humans and protecting her friends—is the right thing to do, even for a ghost like her.

Except this time she knows what to do when she jumps on that ship.

She _knows._

“Goodbye, Church.”

He doesn’t have a reply readymade and the ship is flying away, but then it’s crashing just like another ship long ago, with the same voice telling her about the system failures and imminent contact point.

Then something in glaring white armour and a snarl locked in his wrecked throat is looking through the ship and pulling her out to join the others like her and she _remembers;_ she remembers Connie struggling to do the right thing and Carolina’s desperate competition, and the Dakota twins tearing each other apart, and the difference between Allison and Agent Texas. She remembers _Alpha_ and “Church, your name is Church” and “you gave me this name” and _she failed him again, he doesn’t even fucking remember, that’s so fucking typic_ –

The Meta—not the big dummy Maine anymore, not for ages—stores her away as thousands of echoes rush into the aching gaps.

Somehow, remembering everything doesn’t make her feel any better.

But it helps when she is given one last respite as Agent Washington confronts the Director and the EMP prepares to go off. A second is a lifetime for an AI, and when Church appears in their midst with the other AIs crying for Alpha, he has time to find her.

“You’re late, asshole.”

“Not my fault you went and got yourself blown up,” he snorts.

“Well, this second time might be.”

He deflates all at once at those words, and she reaches out to grab his hand before the gaslighting scenarios of the past can claim him.

“Sorry,” he says quietly like he did once before when neither of them remembered enough, and he clutches tightly at her hands. They’re gloved, both of them still in armour, but she sees a flicker of his face in the fractured light and she swears she can feel the warmth of his hand.

“Show a little equality,” she says. “We were both a part of this mess.”

“Yeah, but it’s cuz of me that you’re here a–”

“ _Don’t_ undermine my choices, Church,” she says sharply, but she doesn’t add anything about the Director and Allison, and the all ways he couldn’t accept that she chose the world over him.

“Can I at least call them stupid?” Church says a long moment later. The jab is a lot weaker than usual, but with the countdown around them and all the individual lights of his being, this ending might be all they need.

“Your face is stupid,” she shoots back in true Red and Blue spirit.

 “You love my stupid face,” he says, and when she just rolls her eyes, she really _can_ see his wide grin.

As far as last moments before death go, Tex thinks this one is pretty alright.  

**Author's Note:**

> Um, yeah, so wayyyy back (I mean months) someone mentioned the topic of Tex and touching, which I of course then ran with in a complete mess of feels and character exploration and Chex moments. With the retconning that happened and how Tex acted in the bgc, a part of me always thought she went back for Alpha again but this time they caught her and fucked with her memories so she wouldn't remember needing to "save" Alpha and all the real shit that happened with AIs, hence why she never tells Alpha in bgc what she knows. (Also because it's angsty).
> 
> So anyways, I finally decided to write it for my friend's birthday who loves Tex. Hope everyone enjoyed!


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